Zune and PlaysForSure much ado about nothing

By Stan Beer
Monday, 18 September 2006 15:17

Opinion and Analysis

Readers, analysts and Microsoft itself have been making a big noise about how Zune will not play music through services that use its PlaysForSure digital rights management system but only through its own exclusive new Zune DRM. I say baloney.

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If Microsoft is asking the world to believe that the company intends to launch a music player that will only play music bought through its own music store, then the company is either having a lend of them or is a bunch of twits. And I don't think Microsoft is a bunch of twits.

All I keep hearing is "but that's what Apple does with iPod". Well actually that's not what Apple does with iPod.

According to the latest figures, there are about 60 million iPods in the market and about 1.5 billion iTunes downloads to date. That makes an average of 25 iTunes tracks per iPod. Where did all the other hundreds of tracks that people have on their iPods come from?

Aside from tracks downloaded from the illegal file sharing marketplace and legally ripped from purchased CDs, you can bet your bottom dollar that quite a few tracks on iPod will have been also ripped from CDs after having been burned from a PlaysForSure download.

The fact is that most of the music on iPods today was not purchased through iTunes. However, much of that non-iTunes music was purchased legally. Therefore what the market is saying to music companies, the computer companies and the music download sites is if we pay good money to buy music legally from you, we'll play it on whatever device we damn well please.

Now back to Microsoft. If the company tried to cut itself off from the rest of music playing world by making its Zune players only compatible with music bought through its Zune Marketplace store, new Zune owners would find themselves with precious little to fill their 30GB hard drives.

It is almost a given that most of the music on Zunes, like on iPods, will come from other sources than its own music store. Most of it will be ripped from CDs. Some of those CDs will have been burned from PlaysForSure downloads.

It is quite right that Microsoft says now that Zune will not be directly compatible with PlaysForSure downloads from sites like Napster. Most portable music player owners who don't have an iPod will find that policy repugnant. They already own a heap of music tracks that they've bought through Microsoft's own DRM and now the company is telling them that its new player won't play them? I don't think so!

My bet is that Microsoft will offer PlaysForSure music owners a way to get their content onto Zune other than burning and ripping CDs even if it's only a one-off offer. As for music going from Zune to PlaysForSure devices, well I guess it's RIP.